Basil King - Abrahams Bosom

Because he was unaccustomed to doctors, and thought it the right thing to say, he asked the physician to name his malady frankly.

"I wish you'd tell me. I can stand it, you know."

In the bottom of his heart he was sure there was nothing to be afraid of. He was only sixty, which in the twentieth century is young, and as hale as he had been at thirty. This weakness, this sudden pain, this sense of suffocation, from which he had been suffering for the past few months, might be the beginning of a new phase in his life, the period commonly known as that of breaking up; but even so, he had good years still before him.

He could wait for the doctor's answer, then, without undue anxiety, turning toward him an ascetic, clean-cut profile stamped with a lifetime of high, kind, scholarly meditations.

The doctor tilted slightly backward in his chair, fitting his finger tips together, before he spoke. Any telltale expression there might have been in his face was concealed by a scraggy beard and mustache that grew right up to the edges of a lipless mouth.

"It's what is called Hutchinson's disease," he said at last. "I've known a few cases of it; but it's rather rare"--he added, as if reluctantly--"and obscure."

"But I've heard of it. Wasn't it," the patient continued, after a second's thinking, "the trouble with poor Ned Angel?"

"You mean the organist chap at Saint Thomas's--the near-sighted fellow with a limp--the one you had to get rid of?"

A sharp hectic spot like a splash of red paint came out in each of the clergyman's wax-like cheeks.

"That's the man. It--it carried him off in less than two months."

The doctor was used to embarrassing situations.

"I believe it did," he responded in a tone that seemed to make the fact of slight importance. "I remember hearing that he put up no fight; that he didn't want to live. You knew him better than I did--"

"I knew him very well indeed; and a sweeter soul never breathed." There seemed to be something that the rector of St. Thomas's was anxious to explain. "He'd played our organ and trained our choir for forty years--ever since the church was a little mission chapel, none too sure of its future. He was a chemist by profession, you may remember, and he'd done our work entirely without salary. But you know what American churches are. Once we'd become big and wealthy we had to have the best music money could provide; and so poor Angel had to go."

"And it killed him."

"No; I don't think so. People say it did; but I don't agree with them. It nearly killed me when I had to tell him--the parish put it up to me; but as for him he simply seemed to feel that his life on earth was over. He had fought his good fight and finished his course. That was the impression he made on me. He wasn't like a man who has been killed; he was rather like one who has been translated. He just--was not. All the same it's been a good deal on my mind; on my conscience, I might say--"

But the doctor had other patients in the waiting-room and was obliged to think of them.

"Quite so; and, therefore, you see that in his case there were contributing causes; whereas in yours--"

It was the patient's turn to interrupt:

"And for this Hutchinson's disease, is there any cure?"

In spite of his efforts to seem casual the doctor's voice fell.

"None that science knows of--as yet. But able men have taken it up as a specialty--"

"And its progress is generally rapid, isn't it?"

"Since you ask the question, I can only say, yes--generally. That doesn't mean, however, that in the case of a man of temperate life, like you--"

But Berkeley Noone had heard enough. He listened to what the doctor had to say in the way of advice; he promised to carry out all orders; but he was sure his death sentence had been pronounced. He took it as most men take death sentences--calmly as far as the eye could see, but with an inner sense of being stunned. Getting himself out of the office without betraying the fact that he knew he had heard his doom he roamed the city aimlessly.

By degrees he was able to think, though thinking led no farther than to the overwhelming knowledge that he was to be cut off. Cut off in his prime were the words he used. He had never been more vigorous than in the past few years--except for those occasional spasms that latterly had come and gone, and left him troubled and wondering. They had not, however, interfered with his work, seeing that he had preached and lectured and visited his parishioners and written books as usual. Moreover, he had fulfilled his duties with a power and an authority for which no younger man would have had the experience. For another ten years, he had been reckoning, he could go on at the same pace; and now the ten years were not coming!

Nevertheless, when, a few weeks later, he was confined to bed he began to see that his situation was not without advantages of which he had taken no note at first. For one thing, he was tired. He had not recognized the fact till he had kept his room a week. A day having come when he was slightly better, it was suggested that he might get up and go out. But he didn't want to. He preferred to stay where he was. His lack of zest surprised him. It surprised him still more when he crept back into bed, with the conviction that it was the spot he liked best of all. Bed by day had always fired him with impatience. Now it seemed to him a haven, delicious and remote. The world might wag in the distance, but the wagging had nothing to do with him.

Nothing to do with him when all his working life had been spent at the heart of its energies! He had wrought and fought, and struggled and suffered, and lost and won. He had been maligned and abused and misunderstood, and had found enemies where he might have looked for friends; and yet he had never been more himself than when in the excitement of battle. It was the less credible then that the world should have no interest for him any more, and that he should find it a relief to get away from it.

And he should get away from St. Thomas's. Six months ago he would have been angry with the man who had suggested that as a possible form of solace; and yet the fact was there. The parish had been his life. He had come to it as its first rector; his preaching had built it up. He had hardly ever taken a holiday without regulating beforehand every service and meeting that would take place in his absence. He had hardly ever come back without the sense of being just where he belonged. And now he should never again go into the pulpit and instruct other men as to what they ought to do! Never again should he make his round of calls on kindly, carping parishioners! He should not have to take the respectful admonitions of his vestry any more, or try to appease its members, or defend himself for writing books. All that was over. He sank back among his pillows, with a sigh of comfort. He should get away from it.

Later he made a discovery that astonished him and gave him pain. He should get away from his wife.

A little thing revealed this, too, as an escape. Emily had bustled into his bedroom with a cup of broth. She liked plenty of salt in her broth, and he very little; but it was one of those small differences of taste to which she had never become reconciled. It fretted her that he shouldn't know when things were as they ought to be; and, not to fret her, he had during two-and-thirty years submitted to her wishes docilely. But to-day he felt privileged to put up a mild protest.

"Isn't there too much salt in this broth, dear?"

Standing by his bedside, she took the cup and tasted it.

"No, darling. It's very good indeed. I seasoned it myself. It's exactly right."

"Thanks, dearest." As broth exactly right, he forced himself to swallow it.